My review of the Lysefjord cruise and Preikestolen hike combined

The shape of the day

Cruise first, then the shuttle, then roughly 8 km and four to five hours of walking, then the road back. Eight and a half hours is the figure on the listing and it is the honest one. The two halves do not compete with each other: from the deck you look up 604 metres at a plateau on which you cannot make out people, and from the plateau you look down at a fjord 42 km long and up to 422 m deep. Doing both on one day is the only way to have those two pictures in the same weather.

The cost of that shape is the order. You spend the first part of the day sitting and the second part climbing, which is the reverse of how most people would arrange a mountain. If you would rather start fresh, take the hike on its own — from the terminal or with pickup — and put the boat on another day, which also lets you give the rain to the boat and the clear spell to the hill.

What recurs in the reviews

179 reviews at 4.7 is a real sample, and the note worth repeating is Takumi’s: the elevation difference should not be underestimated, but it is doable. He puts it at 650 metres. Our own figure is lower and less certain, because published numbers for this trail run from about 330 to 500 metres depending on whether the dips are counted, so treat 650 as what the day felt like to a walker rather than as a measurement. Both halves of his sentence are true and the order he put them in is the right one: the warning comes first.

The second theme is the length, and it is not really a complaint. Eight and a half hours is printed on the listing, and people who read it are not surprised by it. Where I would hesitate is with children. Eight and a half hours with a mountain in the middle is a great deal to ask of a seven-year-old, and the age question is dealt with on going with children.

What nobody can put in a review is the weather twice over. You are buying two exposures to the same day, which cuts both ways: a grey morning on the water can clear by the afternoon, and a clear morning can close in by the time you are on bare rock.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

For: anyone with one day in Stavanger who wants the whole of Preikestolen rather than half of it. Anyone travelling without a car, since it leaves from the middle of town. Walkers who are used to a full day out and would rather have the fjord as the warm-up than as a separate excursion.

Against: cruise passengers, for whom eight and a half hours against an eight-to-ten-hour call has no slack in it at all — read the arithmetic and then the six-hour tour. Families with young children. Anyone who does not really want the hike, who should take the boat alone and keep the afternoon. And anyone who wants quiet, since this arrives at the main path at the busiest time of day: the crowds page and best time of day explain when the trail thins out.

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